Tonight
by repmetsyrrah
Summary: Sybil makes a visit to the garage and finds her fiancée with an unexpected companion.


**A/N: **Another one from Tumblr, this time for the prompt of 'accidental-baby-acquisition'. Takes place during 2x07, shortly after Ethel leaves the servants' hall.

**Tonight**

* * *

After the excitement at luncheon, Sybil excused herself, claiming a need to clear her head with some fresh air and a walk.

Her feet automatically fell onto the well-trod path to the garage, except today she felt a particular thrill in the knowledge she was not merely visiting her friend but her fiancée. The man she had agreed to marry, the man who she loved and who loved her beyond anything she had ever thought possible.

She had been expecting to find him alone, so it was more than a mild surprise to find him in the garage, holding a baby. He turned at the sound of her footsteps and smiled at her, swaying back and forth as if it was perfectly normal for her to have found him with a small child in his arms.

Sybil couldn't help grinning back. The scene was almost beautiful, she thought, he looked so lovely with a child, so natural.

_Will he look that good with our baby?_

Sybil blinked, it was too early for such thoughts, instead she allowed her curiosity to win her over.

"Who is this?"

"This is Charlie," Tom said, bouncing the little boy slightly on his hip, "he's-"

"Ethel's," Sybil realised, "yes, of course."

Tom nodded. "Mrs Hughes wanted to speak with her before she left, little Charlie here was fussing so I offered to watch him for a few minutes."

There was a slightly awkward pause before Sybil remembered the chauffeur's relative isolation from the other servants and briefly explained the situation to him.

"Lord, poor Ethel," he sighed.

"You didn't ask what was going on when they came by the garage and gave you a small child?" Sybil raised an eyebrow.

"I suspected something like that," he admitted, sounding genuinely saddened, "but it's still awful to hear it confirmed."

Sybil came properly into the garage to lay and hand on his arm and a kiss on his cheek. He smiled at her.

"I like that I'm allowed to do that now," Sybil said, felling slightly guilty at the joy it had brought her when they had been discussing someone else's misfortune.

"I like it too," Tom told her, before Charlie distracted him by tugging on his tie with a tiny hand. "Hey, not that," he chuckled, extracting it from his grip. "Here, would you like to go see Lady Sybil?"

"Oh, no, it's okay." Sybil took a step back, "I can't."

"Of course you can," Tom told her, "but you don't if you don't want to."

"You make it look easy," Sybil commented, feeling oddly nervous. She had hardly spent any time around children at all, and certainly never this young. _At least one of us knows how to handle them._

"It is really," Tom assured her, "you'll be kind to Lady Sybil now, won't you young man?"

Sybil laughed as Charlie clapped his hands happily and reached out to her.

"Oh!" she gasped softly as Tom passed him over, helping her sit him properly on her hip. "Hello, there."

Charlie gurgled happily at her before putting his hand in his mouth and looking back at Tom. "Here." Tom reached back to his workbench and picked up a little wooden toy.

Charlie reached out and took it, grinning at Sybil as he put it in his mouth. "He's lovely," Sybil said, with a hint of sadness. He wouldn't have an easy life, this child, and through no fault of his own either.

"He is," Tom agreed.

"Do you want children one day?" The question slipped out before she could even think. Suddenly she realise what she had asked, _do you want my children?_ She looked up to find him looking back, his blue eyes staring straight through her as they always seemed to be able to do.

"If you do," he said quietly.

"I think I always just expected to," Sybil told him, "but yes," she added, looking again at little Charlie, who was practically glowing under all the attention, "I think I do."

Tom smiled at her and Sybil knew he was about to kiss her and it was still so thrilling, that they could, that they were allowed to and that he _would_ kiss her so simply and freely.

_It should be this easy_, she realised, _this is real, this is how it should always be._

She leaned forward, ready to meet him, when suddenly he straightened up, and assumed a professional stance. "Mrs Hughes."

Sybil turned quickly, but carefully, mindful of the child in her arms, to find Ethel and Mrs Hughes at the entrance to the garage, looking at her with surprise.

"Lady Sybil was just helping me entertain young Charlie," Tom told them.

"Thank you then, Lady Sybil," Ethel said, nodding awkwardly and relieving Sybil of the happily babbling boy, "Mr. Branson."

"Yes, thank you," Mrs Hughes agreed, before leading Ethel away from the garage and leaving them alone.

"You should be getting back," Tom told Sybil, after they had watched the figures disappear.

"Tonight." She turned to him, taking his hand in hers, "we'll go tonight. I'll tell them I'm ill and come to you."

"I thought-"

"I know, but what difference will a week really make?" Sybil asked. "Just now though, seeing you with Charlie, it made me think," she told him, "and I don't want to wait another second. Not for children exactly but it made me think about family, and how desperately I want you to be mine."

"Tonight?" he asked, as disbelieving as he had been last night, when she had finally given him the answer he'd waited so long to hear.

"Tonight," she promised, sealing it with a kiss.


End file.
